1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus having a function that facilitates setting of an object to be captured within a shooting range when zoomed, and an imaging method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a magnification has become higher and higher in an imaging apparatus such as a digital camera. In an imaging apparatus that has a zoom function of a high magnification, even a slight movement of an object may cause framing-out during field angle adjustment in an ultratelephoto state. Even a small panning operation by a photographer having a camera set ready causes a great change in a field angle range. In such an ultratelephoto state, framing of the moving object to a desired field angle is difficult. To deal with this problem, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-019852 has proposed an imaging apparatus that can easily track a distant moving object.
The imaging apparatus discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open NO. 2006-019852 performs through-image displaying in a shooting standby state with a zoom lens set on a wide-angle side, and displays, as a frame, a portion that becomes a shooting range when zooming-in by a predetermined magnification on the through-image. When a shutter button is half-pressed in this state, the zoom lens is driven to zoom-in by the predetermined magnification. When the shutter button is fully pressed in this state, real shooting can be performed in the zoomed-in state. When the shutter button is released, the zoom lens is driven to zoom out to an original zoom position of the wide-angle side. Hence, the distant moving object can be easily set within the shooting range during the zooming-in.
According to the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-019852, the through-image displaying at the zoom position is performed on the angle side wider than a field angle for real shooting. Consequently, when shooting setting is changed while checking effects by the through-image of the wide-angle side, the real shooting is performed by zooming-in greater than that shown during the through-image displaying. This may prevent achievement of the effects checked by the through-image. For example, when exposure is adjusted based on the through-image of the wide-angle side, an amount of light acquired during the real shooting may be reduced by an amount of the zooming-in, thus making an actually captured image darker than that checked by the through-image. Even when exposure is adjusted to be suitable to the entire through-image of the wide-angle side, the image may be too bright or dark if the same exposure is set with respect to the shooting range zoomed-in during the rear shooting. When a focus is adjusted to be fixed during the through-image displaying of the wide-angle side, during the real shooting, adjustment may be misaligned between the zoom lens and a focus lens by an amount of the zooming-in, causing a blurred image in the real shooting. Similarly for other setting items, when setting is adjusted for shooting at a zoom position different from the zoom position of the real shooting, and the real shooting is performed on that setting while changing the zoom position, a user may not be able to acquire a desired image.